A hiss—clear fury. ‘You don’t know what you’re getting into.’
‘Do I seem like someone who makes poor decisions?’
‘Have Genevieve call me.’
‘For what purpose? You’re divorced. Whatever you once shared is over.’
‘What’s the matter, Konstantinou? You jealous?’
He laughed then. A low, soft rumble. ‘Of a man who does not even know how to please a woman? Oh, yes. My anxiety is off the charts.’
James cursed. ‘Get her to call me.’
‘I’ll do no such thing. Not when it’s clear you can’t be trusted to play nice.’
‘Oh, Genevieve knows I don’t play nice—and she knows what’s going to happen now. It’s her own fault. And yours too, I suppose.’
‘What’s going to happen now is that you’re going to take yourself off and have a long, clear think about whether or not you want me as an enemy,’ Nikos said, letting the words fall. ‘You know who I am.’
Silence, but there was no need for an answer, anyway. Not when the other man would have to have been living under a rock not to know who Nikos was. ‘You can imagine who my contacts are. With a handful of phone calls, I can make sure your political donations dry up—permanently. And I will delight in doing so, believe me.’
‘You—can’t—’
‘Can’t I? Would you like to test me?’
A spluttering sound. ‘Fuck you,’ he shouted.
‘You’ve said that already, Senator. Surely a man of your intelligence can think of something more creative.’
‘She’s not worth this,’ he threw down the phone line. ‘She’s a cold, frigid—’
‘Setting aside the fact I have much evidence to the contrary, if you ever say anything like that about my fiancée again, if you so much as utter her name in anything but the most complimentary of ways, my threat will come to fruition. This is not an idle promise, Senator. I will ruin you in every way you hold dear if you ever make a single move to hurt her. If you threaten or bully her, if you breathe a single word of anything she told you in confidence, when she was trying to make your pathetic marriage work, I will destroy you. If you ever attempt to contact her, if you see her walking on the street and don’t immediately turn and go the other way, you will wish, with every fibre of your being, to be someone else entirely. Do I make myself clear?’
The silence that greeted him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention once more.
‘I said, do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes.’ It was belligerent but also, Nikos was certain, terrified.
‘Good boy,’ he drawled condescendingly. ‘Now get back to your hollow little life, screwing shallow, meaningless women, and think about the fact you had someone very special in your life, for a time, and you ruined it. And then, burn in hell.’
He disconnected the call and threw his phone against the cushions of the sofa, his chest puffing up with outrage at even the sound of the man’s voice. And then, in the reflection of the windows, he saw a movement that had him turning around, heart ramming hard against his ribs.
Chapter Twelve
SHE UNDERSTOOD THAThe was talking about himself. That the anger he felt towards himself for having not been able to appreciate Isabella was at the root of his defence, but, at the same time, just hearing him say those things to her ex-husband—for clearly that was who was on the other end of the line—set a fire in her soul. Hearing the way he threatened James, promising to ruin him financially and politically, knowing that was probably the most likely to get through to him, had underscored something very simple to Genevieve. For all she had wanted to stand on her own two feet and walk away from James, he was just the kind of misogynistic horror of a man who would only be affected by this sort of thing.
But it wasn’t even about James, and it wasn’t about Isabella.
The magic of Nikos’s words, his passion, his respect, flooded her veins so she was running across the room and hurling herself at him, fighting floods of tears as she practically scrambled up his body and into his arms, so she could kiss him and hold him and thank him as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Surprise held him still a moment, but then their predictable, reliable passion flared to life and he was kissing her back, holding her now against him, feet off the ground as he moved them to the sofa and laid her down, before bringing his body weight over hers and nudging her thighs apart with his knee.
‘I meant every word, Genevieve,’ he said, pushing up to stare into her eyes. ‘Even when this is over, and you are back in the States, if he so much as calls you, I expect to know about it. If he ever gives you even a hint of trouble—’
‘He won’t,’ she said, and her smile was enormous because, for the first time in a long time, she truly felt that everything would be okay. Her divorce hadn’t given her that freedom. James had made sure of it. He’d found a way to extend his control and manipulation, his cold hurtfulness, well after their legal union had been dissolved. She’d left America, and come to Greece, but his shadow had been over her the whole time.
Until now.
